The European Adhesive Tape Association (Afera) announced the launch of its 62nd Annual Conference at the Pestana Palace Hotel in Lisbon on October 9 to 11, 2019. Themed “Making the Tape Business Future-Proof,” the event will cover the industry workforce, related business models, supply chains, sales channels, technology, product development, and the application process.

Conference sessions will provide adhesive industry professionals with the opportunity to interact with tape sales and technology drivers, as well as field experts. Delegates from the entire adhesive tape value chain will attend, including: tape manufacturers, suppliers (raw materials, machine, and packaging), converters, distributors, research institutions, national tape organizations, and others. In Lisbon, more than 150 participants from Europe are expected, along with international attendees.

“European businesses cannot assume that tapes will always be used — which is why Afera’s Conference program is aimed at keeping our technology and market relevant,” said Evert Smit, Afera president and head of R&D at Lohmann GmbH & Co. KG. “In order to survive, we have to participate actively in building our future, and this starts with co-operating and creating together.”

“How connected you are is how competitive you are,” added Afera Secretary-General, Astrid Lejeune. “Afera is that connector with events such as the Lisbon Conference.”

The program
The Lisbon Conference working program will consist of 10 lectures over two-day working sessions. This year’s line-up features a topic that has been driving debate among Afera member companies: the war for talent and the next-generation workforce.

Many companies are facing difficulties in understanding, attracting and retaining the new generations of employees. The program hopes to answer one question: How can tape-related companies understand tomorrow’s workforce expectations, needs and aspirations?

Christiane Schober, senior human capital consultant at Deloitte Consulting GmbH, will discuss Deloitte’s annual Global Survey conducted among Millennials (those born 1983-1994) and Generation Z (those born 1995-2002), providing advice on what businesses can do to capture their hearts and minds.

Topics covered at the Lisbon Conference:

• Demographic change in the workforce: an insight into millennials, a generation disrupted
• Hidden opportunities in market data
• Data-driven innovation unlocked by artificial intelligence
• European and North American tech update and the building & construction industry from a European perspective
• Growing the role of PSA tapes in building & construction and beyond
• Update on the global adhesive raw materials market
• Life, the universe and everything: sustainability and the circular economy
• Bioinspired polymers in medical adhesion
• Man or machine: automation and its impact on future workplaces, skill sets and work organization in the manufacturing industry
• Hierarchical automatic topic detection for innovation: industry technology and application trends, company and expert detection.